Great Alpine Road: 6-Day Campervan Adventure From Melbourne - Britz

Five nights and 900 kilometres in a loop from Melbourne in a campervan, over the Great Alpine Road and back through Gippsland.

Glenrowan comes first, where the Kelly gang’s last stand took place in 1880 and the siege site is marked, then Beechworth, a gold town with its 1850s granite streetscape intact, and Wangaratta.

Bright follows up the Ovens Valley, where the planted deciduous trees turn the town orange in autumn, with Mount Buffalo nearby, a granite plateau of tors and waterfalls. Harrietville and Mount Hotham come next, the highest point on the road at around 1,800 metres, then Dinner Plain and Omeo on the descent, the Buchan Caves with their limestone formations, and Lakes Entrance on the coast. Walhalla closes the loop, a gold town in a valley so narrow that the sun reaches it late.

Britz supply the camper and the day-by-day plan, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. The alpine section is sealed but steep and winding, which a long camper feels, and Mount Hotham can close for snow between June and October. Autumn is the season, both for the colour at Bright and for the clearest alpine weather. Six days is comfortable for nine hundred kilometres of this kind of road. The loop also packs in a great deal of variety for the distance: bushranger history, alpine resorts, limestone caves and a coastal lake system, with Walhalla as an unexpected finish.